£1,050.00
A very special Tudor / Rolex ‘Small Rose’ in a solid 9K gold Rolex case, presented for 45 years of service with the British Railways London Midland Region. This is not only a fine mid-century Tudor dress watch, but also a watch with a strong personal and historical provenance: an elegant gold presentation piece marking an impressively long working career.
The watch has a beautifully aged cream dial with raised Arabic numerals, blued steel hands, and the early Tudor rose emblem. The original radium lume dots have been professionally replaced with safe modern lume, carefully aged to preserve the correct vintage appearance. The result is a very honest-looking vintage dial, but without the original radioactive luminous material.
Tudor was established by Hans Wilsdorf, the founder of Rolex, as a sister brand offering reliable Swiss movements in high-quality cases made to Rolex standards. Many vintage Tudor watches from this period are especially interesting because they combine Tudor-signed dials and movements with Rolex-signed gold cases. This example follows exactly that tradition: a Tudor watch with a Rolex case, British hallmarks, and all the character expected from a late-1950s presentation piece.
The case is solid 9K gold, made for Rolex and signed inside the caseback with ROLEX, R.W.C., 375, and reference 4460. The British hallmark is from the Edinburgh Assay Office, 1957, making this a Swiss-English Tudor / Rolex watch in the best vintage sense: Swiss movement and dial, British-assayed gold case.
Inside is the Tudor calibre 1260, an ETA-based manual-wind movement.
